Hor Mok Talay

This is a very typical Thai dish and is generally on the menu of all seafood restaurants. All the ingredients are available at the local markets, though if you are not too fluent in the Thai language, take a native Thai speaker with you. Although the recipe calls for sea perch, any white fish will do.

Ingredients

Serves 4

Prawns de-shelled, deveined

100 gm

Squid bite-sized pieces

100 gm

Crabmeat

100 gm

Sea perch sliced fillet

100 gm

Kaffir lime leaf finely sliced

1 tbspn

Coconut cream

3 cups

Fish sauce

2 tspns

Sweet basil leaves

2 cups

Shredded cabbage

3 cups

Red chilli thinly sliced

2 tbspn

Hor-mok chilli

2 tbspn

Cooking Method

Pound the Hor-mok chilli into a paste and add 2 ½ cups of the coconut cream in a bowl and stir well. Add the prawns, squid, crabmeat, and sea perch and stir gently to mix well, adding fish sauce to taste. Make a bed of sweet basil leaves and shredded cabbage in the bottom of a large bowl and spoon the seafood mixture onto this. Pour the remaining ½ cup of coconut cream on top and sprinkle with chilli and kaffir lime leaf.

Place the bowl in a steamer in which the water is boiling and steam over high heat for about 15 minutes. Remove from the steamer and it is ready to eat.